10+ Best Free JavaScript Lightbox Libraries

By Thoriq Firdaus. in Toolkit. Updated on September 2, 2022.

Lightbox is one popular way to overlay images on the web. When you click on an image, the Lightbox pops up with some form of animation and dims the background so your focus is on the image itself. The image is also larger in scale. Most popular Lightbox JavaScript libraries that we have known for years let you do this well on a desktop, but not so much on mobile platforms.

Neglecting this and the need for responsiveness is not a good idea nowadays, which is why this collection of 15 responsive Lightbox libraries must be checked out.

PhotoSwipe

PhotoSwipe is by far my favorite ligthbox plugin. It’s light, touch-enabled, and most importantly modular which allows me to ditch a few parts that is not needed. It runs nicely in mobile browsers. You can swipe through images with your fingers as you would in a native app, and the transition runs really smooth.

Dependency: None
Browser Support: IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and a couple of mobile browsers.
License: MIT license

MagnificPopup

MagnificPopup is another lightbox plugin, developed by the same person that gave us PhotoSwipe, Dmitry Semenov. It comes in the form of a jQuery/Zepto plugin, and also brings missing capabilities in PhotoSwipe such as support for Video, Map, and Ajax content. This is a great alternative for those who prefer having more features at hand.

Dependency: jQuery 1.9.1+, or Zepto.js
Browser Support: IE7 (partially), IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
License: MIT license

SwipeBox

Swipebox is a jQuery plugin with touch gesture support for mobile platform. It also supports videos from Youtube and Vimeo aside from images. Swipebox is also downright easy to implement, and has a handful of options to customize its behavior. I think Swipebox is a great lightbox plugin for JavaScript noobs.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, IOS4+, Android, and Windows Phone.
License: Undefined

iLightbox

iLighbox is a jQuery lightbox plugins with a wide range support of media types: including videos, Flash / SWF, Ajax content, iframe and maps. This plugin also adds social media buttons on top of the media, allowing your users to share it to Facebook, Twitter or Reddit. Also check out the advanced section to see how iLightbox can be applied in different scenarios.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE7+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: Undefined

Lightbox for Bootstrap

Lightbox is one of the glaringly missing pieces from Bootstrap. This plugin fixes that. If you are using Bootstrap, I highly recommend using this library. The plugin is well-integrated with Bootstrap’s code-base.

Dependency: jQuery and Bootstrap Modal
Browser Support: IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: GNU license

Nivo Lightbox

Nivo Lightbox is a flexible lightbox plugin. Several options are included to change the appearance into the way you like it to appear, such as changing the theme, the transition effect, and switching the navigation.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: MIT license

ImageLightbox

ImageLightbox is a lightbox plugin without the bloat. It is built specially for image hence the name given — no video or other media type supported. It also does not require extraneous HTML markup; the <img> element is sufficient. The plugin just works.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: Undefined

Mini Lightbox

Another lightbox plugin with none of the bloat. The library is only 2kb, and works only with images. It’s the perfect plugin if you only designate for the latest browser and do not need to overlay other media types like videos.

Dependency: None
Browser Support: IE10+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: MIT license

LightCase

Lightcase is a lovely lightbox plugin. It comes with several animations that makes user interaction come alive, like fade, elastic zoom and scrolling. Furthermore, it also supports various types of media including Youtube embed, HTML videos, SWF and input forms. The plugin also properly handles media cannot be reached or found errors

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: GPL license

FeatherLight

The 6kb Featherlight is a bare plugin for savvy developer and carries only the essentials. If you need, for example, to group image lightbox in a gallery, you can include the gallery extension. You can also develop your own extension for this plugin to fit in your project needs.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE8+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: MIT license

LightLayer

LightLayer is an easy to use lightbox plugin. It has a handful of options, custom JavaScript methods, and custom events. the plugin works with images, videos, maps, and external content. What’s more can we ask.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Opera
License: MIT license

LightGallery

LightGallery, another lightbox plugin with a lot of features added. It comes with more than 20 options to customize the tiniest of details of the lightbox.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE7+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, iOS, Android, and Windows Phone
License: MIT license

FluidBox

Fluidbox is an image lightbox plugin that is inspired from Medium. It works with images under various circumstances including floating image, image with absolute position, images that have border and padding, and galleries. Check out how it was built. If you need a WordPress plugin, there is one.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE9+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera
License: MIT license

StripJS

StripJS is a unique lightbox plugin. Rather than overlaying the image, the plugin slides the images in from the side instead, so that it won’t block the whole content. StripJS supports both image and video.

Dependency: jQuery
Browser Support: IE7+, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, iOS 5+, and Android 3+
License: Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 license